Missed

Rain outside I am not in:
I am the boy
catching spit in his hands

If I could weave the fibers of my clothes
through the grated entrance
of the storm drain, until I was naked
until it was flooded, until all the people
came rushing from their housing units
to shovel water off their porches
to yell into pillows of thunderCan’t you see we’re drowning!
Would I earn being hated with so much
stomached love, looked upon with envy
closer to something lost like
the back teeth and spleen were for?
Could you even tell me from the water?
Both of us a single thing more than we are
our parts, the ants and the bats and the
dead grasses laughing, the lightning